Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Dennis Counterman was freed from a Pennsylvania court­room on October 18, 2006 after serv­ing many years on the state’s death row. Counterman had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1990 for alleged­ly set­ting a fire in his own house that result­ed in the death of his three chil­dren. That con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2001 because pros­e­cu­tors had with­held evi­dence from the defense indi­cat­ing that the old­est child had a his­to­ry of fire-set­t­ing. At Counterman’s orignial trial,…

In a recent speech to law stu­dents from Furman University, William W. Wilkins, the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, expressed doubts about the val­ue of the death penal­ty giv­en its high costs and prob­a­ble lack of deter­rence. He also not­ed that the exis­tence of the death penal­ty in the U.S. makes it very dif­fi­cult to extra­dite sus­pects from for­eign coun­tries who oppose cap­i­tal punishment.With respect to the extra costs attibutable to capital…

The Common Sense Foundation of North Carolina released a study on October 11, 2006 that found that at least 37 peo­ple now on death row had tri­al lawyers who would not have met today’s min­i­mum stan­dards of qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Nearly a third of the cas­es where suf­fi­cient data was avail­able fell into this substandard…

On October 13, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cap­i­tal cas­es from Texas in which the defen­dant was sen­tenced to death after the jury was giv­en instruc­tions that the Court has since found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Unlike in most states where the jury con­sid­ers a range of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances about the crime and the defen­dant before choos­ing a sen­tence of life or death, in Texas the jury was (the law has since been mod­i­fied) giv­en a series of yes-or-no questions…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate LaRoyce Smith even though they had reviewed his case once before. On October 6, 2006, the Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari to decide whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had applied the wrong stan­dard after the Supreme Court had sent Smith’s case back to them ear­li­er. The dis­pute does not involve Smith’s 1991 con­vic­tion for the mur­der of a Taco Bell man­ag­er in Dallas. Rather the Supreme Court held (7 – 2)…

Edward Johnson is a for­mer FBI Agent who cur­rent­ly over­sees inves­tiga­tive work for the Union County (NJ) Prosecutor’s Office. He recent­ly expressed his per­son­al opin­ions about the state’s death penal­ty. He con­clud­ed that in New Jersey pub­lic opin­ion may now have moved to the point where the death penal­ty will be abol­ished. He not­ed, in…

At a joint press con­fer­ence held by the European Commission (EC) and the Council of Europe, Vice-President Franco Frattini of the EC stated that ​“the admin­is­tra­tion of State killing via the judi­cial sys­tem serves no use­ful pur­pose in pre­vent­ing crime but can have a bru­tal­is­ing effect on soci­eties that inflict…

As part of DPIC​’s ongo­ing mis­sion to serve the pub­lic with analy­sis and infor­ma­tion on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, we have devel­oped a resource cen­ter for stu­dents. This page will assist stu­dents wish­ing to do explore issues sur­round­ing the death penal­ty. There are ideas for debates and research papers as well as links to con­nect stu­dents with aca­d­e­m­ic resources on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The new link answers fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions, such as DPIC​’s stance on the death penal­ty and how…

Corey Maye was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a police offi­cer in Prentiss, Mississippi, on the day after Christmas in 2001. The police offi­cer was part of a drug raid on a neigh­bor’s apart­ment. Maye claims that the police broke into his duplex unan­nounced and that he fired his gun in defense of him­self and his 18-month-old daugh­ter. Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks recent­ly ruled that Maye was enti­tled to a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because his defense counsel…

A Los Angeles Times arti­cle on the recent hear­ings in fed­er­al District Court regard­ing the California’s lethal injec­tion process was entitled ​“The Chaos Behind California Executions.” Excerpts from the article…